Carbonating, how to question.

[T.Omally]

Damn near everything I've read about home brewing gives vague instructions on how to properly carbonate using sugar. Usually they say, add 3/4 cups of sugar per 5 gallons of beer then bottle. I'm wondering what the best method for adding the sugar is. We're going to have about 50-55 bottles from what I gather so should we just separate the sugar and add it to each bottle, should we add the sugar to the secondary and then bottle it? I just know I'm missing some steps so any help you guys can offer would be very much appreciated.

[Travisty]

What I usually do, and I think most do it this way, is I dissolve the sugar in about a cup or two of water and boil it for about 5 minutes to sanitize it and drive off any oxygen in the water. Then I add this sugar solution to a bottling bucket and rack my ready to bottle beer on top of it. Racking the beer onto the sugar solution really helps to mix the sugar into the beer so you get nice even carbonation throughout the batch. You may also want to gently stir the beer and sugar mix with a sanitized spoon if you're not confident the sugar is mixed in well yet. My bottling bucket has a spigot on it, so I just attach sanitized 3/8" ID hose and bottling wand to the spigot and bottle via gravity.

[wunderbier]

I think Palmer's How to Brew covers it nicely: http://howtobrew.com/section1/chapter11-4.html

You've mentioned 3/4 cups "sugar" per 5 gallons. Typically that's dextrose, i.e. corn sugar. Per the link, you can also use 2/3 cups sucrose, i.e. white table sugar. The latter is cheaper for the same or better results, in my opinion. Also, you'll have more consistent batch-to-batch results if you weigh these quantities on a digital kitchen scale. Not necessary, but useful. Finally, scale (proportionally) the amount of sugar used should the batch be more or less than 5 gallons. Cheers.

[gbob]

+1 on the advice given.

In the ideal world you would add an even amount of sugar to each bottle. That way you would be sure to get even carbonation. Realistically, you're going to have enough going on to have to deal with that as well.

Batch carbonate by adding the diluted sugar on the bottom of the bottling bucket.

Remember that sanitation is your number one concern right now. Sanitize each bottle and do your best to cap them just as soon as the bottle is filled. Obviously this goes a lot faster if it's a 2 man job.

Be sure you keep track of the bottles. Leave a bottle behind in your basement so that 6 months from now you can judge it against your later beers.

BTW, you might want to label your beer. Print up some nice labels on paper and attach them to your bottles by brushing milk on the back of the label and sticking it to the bottle.

Good luck, man.

[T.Omally]

Thanks guys! We just transfered to the secondary yesterday and should be ready to bottle in about a week. This info. is really helpful.

[brewerTristan]

Just a note on labeling, which I'm sure many people do: I always write some code on all the bottle caps so I can distinguish one batch from another. One letter usually suffices. If storing for a long time, it also helps to put the date on there, if you can fit it.

[squirrelpirate]

Great advice from everyone who has posted previously.

I used Sharpies to write on the one-letter codes on the bottle caps. Personally, I found it ideal when opening up cases of my beer (I did not have enough fridge space to store all of my bottles) to put bottles in the fridge. My friends also loved it when it came time to grab a beer out of a cooler or out of my fridge. It was simple to just look at the cap and know you had the right style.

I assume you have a bottling bucket. If you do not, I would strongly recommend picking one up before you bottle. I didn't have one, which wasn't a big deal when I fermented in a bucket. However, when I racked out of carboy, I needed to dump the sugar in and pick the carboy up to swirl it around and make sure the sugar was evenly distributed. This was ridiculously foolish in hindsight, and also extremely dangrous handling full carboys in such a way.

Also, I would not expect a full 50+ bottles from your batch. I think the most I ever got from a 5 gallon batch was 46. Since you transferred to secondary, I expect you left a lot of matter behind in the bottle carboy, and when you do bottle, it's better to leave all of that behind in order to have a relatively sediment-free beer.

Have a buddy help you, be sanitary, and you'll be fine. Best of luck.

-Kyle